Teaching Children How To Read: Blending Words

What is blending?

Blending is the skill of connecting individual speech sounds (phonemes) together without stopping in between each sound to make a word.

Why is blending important?

Blending is very important because being able to mentally join speech sounds together to make words helps students to decode unfamiliar words using letter-sound patterns when reading.

Tips to Help Your Child To Blend

Make it fun!

Blending is tricky. It's working out this crazy code and piecing it together. We suggest fun books! Our top picks are these two incredibly fun books from The Wordley Series. They are written by a mom, Meghan Dryza, and her son Bo Dryzga. The books are read as a rap songs! Scroll below and click on the link to watch Meghan & Bo drop the beat.

2. Don't Rush & Be Patient

This skill needs their full concentration. Show them you’ve got time for them to figure it out. Sound out each phoneme, tapping the corresponding letters as you do so, then give your child time to blend the word . It may take a minute or so for them to get it, but give them that ‘mental space’ to think.

3. Invest in magnetic letters

Magnetic letters are great for the fridge, and use different colors for segmenting the different sounds in a word.